Rust-Lightning v0.0.117: Steering towards asynchronous channel monitoring and beyond

Posted 7 months ago by LN+

LDK's rust-lightning is a highly performant and flexible implementation of the Lightning Network protocol. The release v0.0.117 of Rust-Lightning named "Everything but the Twelve Sinks" brought several API updates to enhance its functionality:

ProbabilisticScorer Improvement: The internal models of ProbabilisticScorer were significantly improved to boost payment success rates, albeit at a small cost to routefinding performance. This was achieved through better decaying, a more detailed historical channel liquidity tracker, and a new default option to estimate a channel's current liquidity non-linearly based on its capacity.
Custom TLVs for HTLC Recipients: This update allows the addition of custom TLVs (Type-Length-Value) for recipients of Hashed Time-Locked Contracts (HTLCs), enhancing the protocol's flexibility.
Third-Party Watchtowers Support: The ability to generate transactions for third-party watchtowers was added, providing an extra layer of security and oversight over channel operations.
KVStore Interface: The KVStorePersister was replaced with a more generic KVStore interface, bringing more features and flexibility.
Batch Funding of Outbound Channels: A new method for batch funding of outbound channels was introduced, optimizing the process of channel establishment.
Payment Path Probing: Before approving a payment, users can now probe potential payment paths using ChannelManager::send_preflight_probes.
Asynchronous ChannelMonitor Updating: In an alpha preview, fully asynchronous ChannelMonitor updating was introduced. However, it's noted that there are a few known but rare race conditions which might lead to a loss of funds.